Gaming Star Wars: The Old Republic Preview

You obviously never played Star Wars Galaxies when it first came out.

 

True. I heard it was really good, but by the time I got around to trying it at a friends Lucas had gotten around to ruining it.

 

It wasn't Lucas. It was the idiots at SOE.

 

I haven't played a huge number of MMOs, no. I was into City of Heroes for a while and played Lord of the Rings: Online when that first came out, as well as sinking a couple of dozen hours into WoW over the years.

I'm very familiar with the Star Wars universe. I like it, just as I like Star Trek. I'm not a 'fan' in the event that I follow them intensely, but I've seen all the films, played most the games, read a couple of books, etc...

I've actually seen the game twice before and, in both those instances, I was very excited about it. I love Bioware. I love RPGs. Unfortunately, both times I've seen the game before I didn't feel (unlike other sites who I know saw it for the same amount of time at the same events) that I'd seen enough to really write about properly, so I left it alone.

The event was divided into two days. One day I played only as Bounty Hunter. The other day I played with a different class, but embargoes prevent me from talking about that any further. But it was a different type of class to the BH.

See previous question, but suffix it with the fact that I also spent most the evening talking about the game with the other players and so learned a bit more about the classes they played too, such as the Agent.

 

I really hope this improves before its release was looking forward to this one. As it’s been said bioware is a company you thought would do a good job. Guess Ill wait till its reviewed as a finished product before I make my mind up.

 

this preview started a massive flame war all over the place, great job BT, time to stick it up them corpo's butts at BW/LA/EA unholy trinity

 

Flame war? Were? Surely not in this thread. Everyone's been pretty mild mannered including people who disagree with the preview. Or maybe I'm just so used to people on the internet being p***s that I don't notice these things anymore unless they get really out of hand.


To people who say that the game will be like KOTOR 3-10, I think you will find it hard to stand up to the original games if you consider that the story will be stretched out and diluted because of the quest system. I think the main problem of a story driven MMO is that any good story understands the concept of pacing. There are a few sagas that can last for a while, but ultimately the game's content will have to last long enough for you to pay a subscription and invest months of playtime into the game. This, imho, is very much at odds with the concept of a story driven game.

 

I am a bit offput by the cynical nature of this review, and how quickly some commenters seem to use it as a confirmation that the game will be terrible and horrible. Complaining about opinions would be silly, though, so I'll simply target some specific comments and hope people will defend their words.

What were the quotes? More than 40+ novels worth of script? More dialogue than every other bioware game combined? More than 4,000 hours of voice acting? Sounds like they have plenty of content for whatever pace they choose to set.

This is a big problem, demonisch, but I think your quote needs some altering, as SW:TOR is expected to be much better than WoW, and at launch. That being said, this article doesn't convince me it won't be. I like story in my games, thank you very much.

City of Heroes did that, too. It seems to have worked out well enough for them so far, though I'm not a fan.

...No. Will smith is one of, if not the highest paid actors in hollywood, and he doesn't get 100,000 an hour for his biggest movies. And voice actors don't make nearly as much. Remove at least three zeros from your estimate.

...I disagree. I've never seen a WoW character raise their shield to block or sword to parry, yet I'm seeing lots of that in the TOR combat videos. Wow also has the same tired attack animations, but I'm seeing a lot of varied attacks in the TOR videos. I'm not certain where you're coming from on this one, please explain?

These are pretty hefty assertions to come to without playing the game. Do you have some insight about late-game TOR that you'd like to share with us?

It's no surprise that most reviews are done by game journalists, there are things called NDAs preventing testers from talking about it. Making a blanket statement that all positive reviews about a game are based on the hope of revenue, however, is suspect.

Are you saying that this is the first game in history that noone has actually liked? Interesting.

That's called predicting the future. I don't believe you can do that. And I hope you're wrong.

...I have to agree with that statement. Carry on.

I expected people to play a game before making a summary judgement of it. But I forgot, this is the internet. Silly me.

...Where were you when everquest and nexus launched? o.o



Lastly, Joe, for you I have a simple question. Maybe two. You seem intelligent, and like you think things through before you write them up. Do you think it's possible that maybe you're asking for a lot out of an MMO that isn't even finished yet? Certainly a lot more than has been asked of any other MMO in history?

Food for thought.

 

Bloody hell, have just read through the first few pages of the thread on the official SW:TOR forum about Cardjoe's review. I don't think some of the posters could have been more wound up if you'd gone round to their houses, taken a dump on their desk and then punched them in the face. Am amused by some of the comments tho, like the accusation that Cardjoe is trolling and only wrote a bad preview as part of a cunning plan to get it linked to on the official SW:TOR forums so he could increase Bit-Tech's traffic.

 

Thanks for replying Joe, seems like you're pretty much in the same boat i am (minus the whole actually getting to play it part - was tempted by the UK event but ultimately decided not to).

You mentioned that you'd played it twice previously, now looking back, would you say that your opinion between those events and this most recent one have changed? Or have they helped shaped your opinion given in the review?

+ I look forward to when you can actually talk about the second day's events

This thread isn't really flame-y , although there are a lot of cynical people who think that Joe's opinion is the "absolute truth" and that all the others have been paid etc. Surely it should more be taken into account along with the other positive reviews. Maybe Joe had a bad day or the playstyle just wasn't what he normally enjoys (i.e. he did say that he found standing still and shooting boring, as opposed to being a melee or force user).

I agree that in terms of Story that the game will ultimately suffer, it will be less about you creating a story and more about you finding out about one with minor input along the way.

However i do hope this will fill the current gap i have for an MP/Coop like Mass Effect/Dragon Age/KoTOR. I'm definitely looking forward to doing the same things i do in most MMOs with a bunch of friends except this time it'll be voiced (i personally find it makes a difference, the change between DA:O and ME1/2 was rather pleasant) and that we'll be able to make decisions/argue with each other about what to choose in flashpoints etc.

 

My take: It seems Joe actually just isn't an MMO fan, and would prefer a single player game. A lot of the things he found disappointing are things commonly found in (and an integral part of) the genre. For example, having NPCs respawn is a pretty necessary mechanic in order to have something for the next guy to fight. If it was a bit quicker than he'd like... I'm guessing they sped up the spawns for the event so that all the journalists who were previewing the same class didn't have to wait around and write about long inconvenient spawn times in their previews.

The major contention I have with this article is that it reads like a review of a finished product, rather than a preview of a game in development. Though he acknowledges the game is incomplete, he doesn't hold back in presenting his opinions as if playing a game just released. On the other hand, BW really should be putting it's best foot forward with a playable press build, so maybe Joe's not really to blame here.

The negatives out of the way, I do appreciate he brings to light the inability of ranged classes besides the Smuggler and the Agent being able to use cover. Also disappointing to hear he wasn't enthralled by the story, as the much touted '4th Pillar' has been used the most to hype the game.

 

I feel like a preview of an MMO is a good way to ruin the game for yourself... of course its going to seem empty and bland if the servers aren't full. Given I don't expect this to be KOTAR, but if someone does expect that of course they are going to be disappointed... you can't turn an RPG like that into an MMO. The game would be to big and take to long to make for it to be worth the money.

What I'm hoping for most is that they will continuously be adding content to keep the gameplay interesting and allow the game to evolve around the players. IMO that is the biggest thing about a successful MMO, its the ability to continue to change the game around the players so it becomes more like a real life adventure.

 

I wish people would stop refering to this as a review. I would chalk it up to a typo, but people are using the term many times in each post.

It is a preview people.

 

I think this game needed to take the path of eve-online, and let the players drive their own stories. I mean think about it, imagine if all they did was take eve-online, add a fps aspect and change everything to star-wars, that could be a very successful game.

All I am saying is have the npc quests for intro to the game, but then have the players do the rest. Eve already has huge battles that take place between the big corporations, Imagine how much more vicious this would be if one team was called "The Sith" and the other "The Republic" The story behind each of these teams would automatically encourage players to assume the roles the titles portray.

 

Wow. Posting a negative review just to be different from everybody else that played the game last weekend is pretty pathetic. Do you even enjoy the MMO format? Sounds like this game never had a chance with you.

And oh by the way, you only had 10 or fewer hours of actual game play. 48 hours is a gross exaggeration. If you weren't immediately engaged by the story, fine, you're entitled to your own opinion (btw there are 7 other storylines you didn't play), but don't dismiss the entire game because of that. If the dialogue bored you that much why didn't you just skip it?

 

Considering the huge amount of hype surrounding this game, and the incredibly protective following SWTOR has, I think it's a testament to the quality of your review that there are a large number of posters in the swtor forum agreeing with you. I've been following the game and all the points you've raised have been niggling me as well.

 

As someone who has played the game, I find myself agreeing with most of the preview. People can bash this article all they want but the game is not going to be in development forever and when it comes out, I foresee a lot of disillusioned fanbois.

 

I have played alot of F2P MMO's, and i even played WoW for a while, none of them were very satisfying in terms of keeping my attention locked on the screen, all the quests were virtually the same, 'find 10 of this, 5 of that, oh and while you're at it can you get me some wolf brains?' It was just completely boring, i've found that while MMO's in general are pretty cool, but the way they are set up just sucks, no one wants to do the same thing over and over and over again. If anyone can show me an MMO that actually doesn't do this i'll play it forever.

 

This was no doubt going to be my first MMO ever. I was seriously considering pre-ordering and playing the minute it came out. I absolutely loved the KOTOR series....not for the graphics or the combat system....but for the story.

I get it that with MMO's you can't really have a linear storyline and that not every quest is going to be super exciting and come with compelling stories and characters. Fine. But I need to feel like I'm engrossed in something. I need to feel like I'm an intregal part of the Star Wars universe. I could care less about cartoonish graphics and crappy animated combat. From the looks of it, I may be waiting a while longer if I want to get that with a Star Wars game....hopefully I'm wrong.

 

You know its funny because this game you are describing is nothing like the game Described in any of the other reviews nor is it anything like the game I played at Pax East... The game was super hyped by bioware then even more hyped by the other fansites and press that attended it recently and put out reviews like this one. This is one review out of 33 that I have viewed that didn't like it and realyy had anything bad to say about it at all. It saddens me to see all the people reading and saying they won't play the game now because of it despite the fact that the majority of press gave it amazing reviews. Just a question was the writer of this review working for Blizzard because it sure seems like it.